Ever since those initial Overwatch cinematics made their way onto our screens, the prospect of an Overwatch animated series has been an exciting one. For the past decade, rumours of such a thing have come and gone, but there may still be hope.
In a recent interview, I asked Walter Kong, Overwatch general manager and head of live games and mobile development at Blizzard, if a TV show translation of the hero shooter could still find its way to us. “I would not rule it out,” Kong replied.
“Every time we release assets, whether it’s a hero trailer or an event piece, there are all of these comments about, ‘Hey, we would love an Overwatch animated series. Blizzard, what the hell? When's that happening?’ Kong continued. “So we certainly hear that and I think that it is not a huge stretch to believe that there would be a lot of demand for that type of content. So certainly, no, I won't rule out that sometime in the future there could be other storytelling experiences in the Overwatch universe.”
Blizzard actually did try to get animated shows based on its games off the ground, but those efforts failed. In 2024, Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment author Jason Schreier revealed that StarCraft, Overwatch, and Diablo were due the Netflix adaptation treatment, but then Blizzard sued Netflix for poaching the company’s Chief Financial Officer. In early 2019, former Blizzard CFO Spencer Neumann was fired after breaching his contract to become CFO of Netflix. It seems this dispute was at the heart of the end of those Netflix adaptations.
With Overwatch currently celebrating its 10th anniversary, Blizzard revealed that over 4.4 billion matches have been played in that time, but a hunger for story still remains. This year saw a rethink in how the developer is approaching narrative, with year-long arcs now being told through several seasons. Kong admitted that the studio has always wanted story to be a big part of Overwatch, but bit off more than it could chew back in 2016.
“I think we got the sense that there was this desire to know more about the story of Overwatch, because we had quite a few of the cinematic pieces released before launch,” he explained. “I think they helped establish that kind of emotional resonance prior to the games launch, but what we weren't prepared for was being able to support so many ambitions. I think very early on we knew that we wanted the game to have an ongoing release cadence to it and you don't know how hard that's going to be until you actually do it.”
“And then we also had the ambition to deliver some narrative, some story missions in the game as we showed in 2019 at BlizzCon,” Kong continued. “I think we really underestimated the level of resources necessary to hit with all of that ambition. And I would say that by the time that I stepped into the GM role in the latter part of 2021, it was clear to me that there was too much to work on and I had to make some prioritization decisions. Back then we had been in a bit of a content drought and I made a pretty clear call to prioritize getting back to the delivery of live game content in the PVP game, and then I think that is really the story of why we shifted to that Overwatch 2 model.”
“We did give it a try in terms of resuming development of the story missions and releasing the first chapter in Season 6 of 2023. We did get the signal back from players that it really wasn't resonant and I think that's when we made the decision to focus our resources on the core PvP experience and really have stronger definition of what the game would be that we would serve the players that we had and they were enjoying that specific experience.”
Beyond story, though, Kong has ambitions for Overwatch to spread its wings further than the PvP experience that the world is rooted in. Clear signs of this can be seen in the recent collaboration between Blizzard and Epic to bring its heroes into Fortnite, a deal initiated by Kong himself.
“I went to Epic, and part of my history is that I was at Epic from 2018 to 2020, and I worked on the Fortnite team at the time, and I just saw firsthand the positive excitement and energy that could come from surprising collaborations,” Kong revealed. “It was something that was positive for Fortnite as well as the partners, the collab partners and I felt that the time was right to just bring a bit of excitement to the overall franchise and perhaps expose our heroes to some new audiences. Quickly we felt that our heroes would be presented in a very positive way and as the work developed, that feeling got reinforced and overall we were very, very happy with how the collaboration delivered.”
It was a long time coming, said Kong, who harboured long-held desires for Overwatch’s most beloved characters to exist outside of their hero shooter bubble. “That has been the ambition pretty much from the beginning, but I felt that it could not be done until the core game experience of Overwatch was at a certain level of health and ability to serve our players was at the right place,” Kong added.
“I didn't think that pushing on these type of opportunities prematurely would be the right thing to do. I'm very happy with the leaders on our team and the energy and passion they bring to leading the game, which meant that I could spend more time looking to the future and working on initiatives that take a long time to fully realize. I would say that we are seeing some of that early work come to fruition, but there's a lot more of it that I still want to complete and nothing that I should really talk about right now.”
Could one of those things be the aforementioned animated series? We’ll just have to wait and see. For now, Kong is “happy with where the game is today,” after Overwatch ditched the 2 and refocused its efforts on what made it the smash hit it once was. Blizzard will be hoping that momentum keeps up over the next months and years.
Simon Cardy is a Senior Editor at IGN who can mainly be found skulking around open world games, indulging in Korean cinema, or despairing at the state of Tottenham Hotspur and the New York Jets. Follow him on Bluesky at @cardy.bsky.social.
